Clinch

by Martin Holmén

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Kvisten!’ Beda slaps her wrinkly hands together and sways from side to side behind the counter of dark wood that divides the premises in two. ‘Pay attention, Petrus, hold the door open for our customer!’ She wipes her hands on her apron and gesticulates wildly.

  Petrus, her son, is posted with a broom in a corner, as usual. He’s the sort of unfortunate that everyone addresses by his first name, a large bloke of about my own age, with a sheepish smile under his blond fringe. As deaf as an artilleryman. He puts down his broom and makes a few slow movements towards me, but then stops halfway, blushing and staring down at the floor. Beda rushes into action, opens a hatch in the counter and frees me of the clothes I’ve brought.

  ‘Don’t pay any attention to Petrus! He arrived with his back end first but he’s a good soul and he usually does as he’s told. He can sweep and put sheets through the mangle as well.’

  She puts the laundry on the counter and starts arranging it.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ I fish a cigar out of my pocket and light it. Soon the laundry has been separated into three piles. I toss the gold lighter into the air and catch it. She turns to me.

  ‘Oh, and you see, last night we had a visit from his grace the King himself, me and Petrus.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Yes, and you’d stand there with your hat off, wouldn’t you? If you met his grace the King?’

  ‘Kvisten doesn’t take off his hat for anybody.’

  I wink at Petrus. He can’t possibly have heard me, but he blushes again. I think he likes blokes. Beda gets out a pen and a receipt book. She spits at the pen and closes one eye while she’s writing.

  ‘Yes, and you see, His Majesty praised me so much about my graceful feet and then he took Petrus out for a spin in his impressive car!’

  ‘Sounds like quite something.’ I take the receipt she gives me, putting it in my wallet and tapping my cigar ash into my hand.

  ‘Yes, and I had nothing to offer him when they came back.’ Her hands, chapped after all the years of working with the laundry vats, make a dry, rustling sound when she rubs them together.

  ‘Oh well,’ I say, with a hand on the door handle. ‘There’ll probably be other opportunities.’ I start to whistle again and the bell rings.

  ‘When he whistles, Old Nick shakes his behind,’ Beda calls out after me as I go outside, onto the pavement.

  The cold spell keeps the city in its silent, deadly embrace. A few flimsy brown leaves sweep across the big playground outside the grammar school. They look as if they’ve been cut from the crepe paper Lundin uses to wrap his contraband. Heavy trams whine across the sidings by Norra Bantorget. I try to stamp some life into my feet.

  The slightly famous hotdog man at the south-eastern end of the grammar school playground is wearing a hat with earmuffs and straw-stuffed clogs. Even so, his dentures rattle in his mouth as he counts out the change from a little unica box. He was run down in this very spot by no less than Prince Adolf Fredrik himself, when the heir to the throne skidded in his sports car a couple of winters ago.

  The sausage tastes like any other. I eat it while I push my Rambler towards Kungsgatan. I forgot my gloves. The wooden handles are cold and the air stings the back of my hands. It’s about to start snowing, I can smell it.

  I park the bicycle outside Zetterberg’s house, then pick up my notebook and write down the address of the house opposite. There’s no elevator and I have to walk all the way up to the top floor. I start with the neighbour. That is how things should be done – in roundabout ways. In the olden days I liked pedalling about, watching my adversaries from a distance. Sooner or later they opened themselves up, in pure frustration. Boxing Monthly! described my style as ‘elegant’ but that was not why I danced around like that. Anyone can knock out an opponent, but only a technician can take a bloke’s heart away from him.

  I hear the sound of high heels. The draught of air when the door is opened is loaded with sweet perfume.

  ‘Yes?’ The lady in the doorway has a cropped hairstyle, an even shorter skirt and the shortest imaginable tone of voice. A string of pearls is wrapped around her neck.

  ‘Police.’ I push Olsson’s card under her nose. She doesn’t look at it. Her hand rests on the door frame. Her nails are clean, with no black edges. ‘As you may know there was an accident in the house opposite last Tuesday.’

  My stomach is growling. The sausage didn’t do much good.

  ‘Yes?’

  Does she think I’m a beggar? Can’t she see my suit for herself? I pocket the card and take out my notebook.

  ‘Did you see anything out of the ordinary on Tuesday night?’

  ‘I don’t understand why you have to come here all the time, asking the same questions.’

  ‘Please be good enough to answer.’

  ‘My husband invited me to the cinema and dinner and we came home quite late. The kitchen maid was at home but her window faces the inside yard. So, no, apart from Marlene Dietrich, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. And to be honest, I can’t see what’s so extraordinary about Dietrich either.’

  ‘So nothing to report, then?’

  ‘Have a word with Olivia next door. She’s a widow, always sits in the window.’

  ‘Thank you, I will.’

  She shuts the door right in my face. Her fragrance hovers in the corridor. I turn to the next door. It says ‘Trysell’ on the brass placard. I knock and wait. Always at home? I hammer until the door’s fixtures are rattling. The letterbox squeaks, I listen: nothing. She’s not opening. I make a note in my notebook and leave the building.

  It’s time to track down bowlegged Sonja. Locating a whore is not as simple as people seem to think. The girls are careful: they change names and addresses more often than their drawers and use a legion of code words. Some turn around the number badges of their telephones to stop the Johns working out who they are when they come visiting. Others stuff their doorbells with paper so neighbours don’t complain to the assistant landlords about all the movement at night. But they don’t fool me. I know all their tricks.

  As we’re dealing with a street whore here, I may as well give the brothels of Old Town a miss. I’ll start on Kungsgatan and gradually widen my circuits like a bloodhound. Every place in Klara with a telephone is worth a visit. If I don’t get a bite there, I’ll have to take on the hostels and salesmen’s hotels on Norra Smedjegatan. The five-kronor bills in my wallet should come in handy. Most people in Klara are willing to sell out a tart for a fiver.

  The cold immediately bites my skin when I walk out of the door. The shops and restaurants along Kungsgatan are all lit up. I know as of old which of these establishments have telephones and which of them I can skip.

  I start with Restaurant Dussinet a bit further up the street and re-enter the warmth. Inside the door is a little room with a few clothes rails, watched over by a smart cloakroom girl. Above an arch in red granite leading into the dining room hangs a large painting depicting a bareheaded Charles XII. The warrior king stands straight-backed before his army. Behind him are officers, standard bearers and soldiers.

  A muted hum of voices is streaming out of the dining room. I glimpse the end of an American-style bar in the gloomy, smoky room. A bloke with thinning hair sits on a stool, his elbows resting on the counter. A waitress dressed in matt black silk and a white apron stands on duty under the arch. She curtsies and sniffs.

  I turn to the girl in the cloakroom. She’s a pale-faced lass in her late teens with plenty of padding around her rump and bust. The sound of clinking glasses penetrates the buzz of voices inside the restaurant. One or two of them are celebrating Friday night in advance. I hold out my card.

  ‘A police matter. Do you have a telephone?’

  ‘Further inside, in the booth on the right.’

  ‘No, dearie, I was only wondering. Tell me, I’m looking for a girl by name of Sonja. Not a guest, necessarily, but possibly someone who comes in now and then to use the telephone.
A beautiful, ample girl like you, just under twenty.’

  ‘The telephone is only for paying guests.’

  The cloakroom girl looks down at her shoes. The frail cough of the waitress rings out against the background noise. She tries to keep it in check and her shoulders jerk. My stomach growls again.

  ‘Maybe a little slovenly in her dress?’

  ‘We’re not allowed to let people use the telephone, not even if they offer to pay. The director has put his foot down.’

  ‘Thank you, then.’

  I make a gesture towards the brim of my hat and look into the dining room again. I rub my chin. I could allow myself a tot to warm up before I carry on.

  Slightly warmed up, I go back into the streets with Olsson’s card at the ready. I limp between restaurants, betting shops, workshops, tobacconists and telegram offices. All premises with a telephone are paid a visit. I talk to morose waitresses, bar managers with soiled white aprons, and suspicious workers. The temperature quickly drops even lower. The bells of St Clara keep a check of each quarter-hour.

  By the time the trams are filling up with workers it’s no longer a good idea to use the card; the streets of Klara change character once the day shift knocks off and the night shift begins. The smuggling syndicates have control of the city’s suburbs but there’s still open war in Klara. Anyone with a bit of hair on his chest can try to take over the entry of home-distilled and Estonian vodka. Many have tried but so far none have succeeded. Sooner or later they are found carelessly buried in Lill-Jansskogen or with chains wrapped round their feet in Barnhusviken, where they have been dumped out of sight behind the railways embankment opposite the old lunatic asylum. It’s not as bad as it was five or ten years ago, but it still happens from time to time.

  I continue through the beer cafés with their stale smell of spilled pilsner and large-bodied, seasoned waitresses who like to give customers a thump on the back with each order. I throw my lot in with the artists, communists and temporary workers. No one has heard of Sonja. Finally I pay a visit to the shacks that house Klara’s unlicensed drinking dens. I pull aside thick leather drapes that protect against the December wind and speak with whores and beggars. Their intoxication is already like a thick veil over their eyes. I envy them, but my work won’t allow me to follow their example. When talking to a tart or a waitress I rely on my natural charm, my best suit, and a sob story about a missing sister. With bookies or beggars, I have to sacrifice a five-kronor note; with promises of more of the same to come and Lundin’s telephone number, I leave them shaking their heads. I tick off the addresses in my contacts book.

  I have just come out from a newspaper vendor’s place at the far end of Gamla Brogatan when I catch sight of a full-figured woman walking with a graceless gait along the pavement. She is only about ten metres from me. The coat is different, it’s longer, but her motion is that of Sonja.

  I kill the cigar under my heel. My steps hammer against the pavement. My frozen-stiff feet start thawing out.

  When I have almost caught up with her, she turns. Her eyes, two white buoys with a bottle-green top, are about to pop from their sockets. The wrinkles around them are stretched out. She hunches up and raises her handbag with both hands. Her light-brown leather gloves are clutching it hard. She makes a panting sound.

  I stop abruptly.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I thought you were someone else,’ I tell her.

  The middle-aged woman backs away a couple of steps without taking her eyes off me, then crosses the street and hurries off. I watch her for a long time before I raise my eyes towards the sky. Not a star in sight. I sigh.

  ‘You know what, Kvisten, it’s time for some chow. You’ve earned it, you ugly sod.’

  My stomach answers. It dins like a ship’s boiler.

  It’s half past seven. I’m sitting in the third-class section of the Restaurant Pilen, opposite the Savoy Hotel. On the plate in front of me are the remains of a potato and anchovy bake. I am eating pureed pears with cream, and drinking coffee. The white tablecloth is pierced by cigarette burns in a couple of places. The premises offers some thirty similar tables with four chairs around each. There’s a small number of diners and the sound level is still low. Up in the cross vaults hang simple, round lamps that spread a warm light over the tile floor.

  The newspaper lies open on the table. I brush some cigar ash from the foreign news section. General von Schleicher seems about to be made Chancellor in Berlin; Göring will become the Parliamentary Speaker. The annual emigration quota for America of 3314 Swedes is far from filled, even though we’re in December.

  I look out of the window. Just imagine leaving this cold, dark land behind. That had been my intention. More or less everything but my signature was ready on the professional contract when I took a wrong step. But it’s too late. My last ship has long since slipped its moorings.

  A white cat has taken cover from the bad weather under a parked Ford, also from the catapults of gangland boys. I think about Sonja. I wonder if that’s her real name. Probably not.

  ‘Strange that no one’s seen the lass anyway.’ My voice disappears into the empty air.

  Ten years earlier I could quite simply have gone down to the whore agency in Old Town and bribed the registrar with a half-litre bottle of schnapps to get every imaginable bit of information about her. Now more footwork is needed, and more five-kronor notes. And I have painful feet and a painful lack of five-kronor notes.

  A cycle courier pedals past on a Monark with a box on the front. It’s a two-year-old model. The white cat sticks out its nose from under the car outside and carefully sniffs the air. I roll up a piece of anchovy in a page of the notebook, put it in my pocket and go to the cashier to pay before fetching my overcoat.

  ‘I don’t know her but I know someone who does.’ The shabby cloakroom attendant stares at the folded-up five-kronor note I hold up between my thumb and finger. He’s a big bloke with a grubby collar and gold-coloured buttons on his coat. His hair is slicked back, and his eyes are hungover slits under his bushy eyebrows. His tongue flicks quickly over his thick lips. He glances into the restaurant.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The night porter next door here. At the Boden Hotel,’ he whispers.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Petersén. Like the hockey player.’

  ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘Short, skinny sort, thinning hair. Sometimes he comes here to eat before his shift starts at eight.’

  ‘And you’re sure he knows Sonja?’

  ‘She’s been here many times. Bandy-legged girl from the Dales.’ He leans towards me and lowers his voice. ‘He lets her stay over if it’s not fully booked.’

  ‘At a price?’ I offer him the fiver and he snatches it.

  ‘Nothing’s free.’ He smiles.

  I haul out my timepiece and make a couple of quick decisions.

  ‘I’ll go around the corner and wait. If he comes here first, maybe you can come and get me?’ I hold up the wallet. He nods so eagerly that his oiled hair rises from his bald pate and stands on end.

  The cold hits me as I open the door. I bend down, unfold the bit of paper and throw the piece of fish under the Ford. There’s a click at the base of my spine when I straighten up. Just as I turn into Klara Norra the first snow of the year starts falling with large, downy flakes. I cross the cobblestones and take up a position outside the pawnbroker’s place next to Café Leoparden. From here I have a view into the hotel vestibule on the other side. There’s a hollow thump as a porter throws chunks of wood into the firewood hatch of the house on my left. Overhead, someone is quickly winching in slips and torn sheets on a washing line hanging across the poorly lit street. A shaggy tramp looks up at the sky with concern and hurries his limping steps.

  I turn around and see my reflection in the barred window of the pawnshop. The shiner under my eye is illuminated when I light my cigar. In the window, wedding rings, typewriters, necklaces, pocket watches and other heirlooms are lined up on a w
hite cloth. I straighten my tie knot, take a couple of quick drags and mumble at my reflection: ‘You can bloody wait. You hardly ever did much else.’

  The porter hurries off with his wheelbarrow. An ash-grey light from the hotel vestibule falls across the pavement. Big snowflakes fill the narrow, dark gap between the houses. I haven’t bothered asking in the many hotels around Central Station. The staff are usually good at identifying the girls, and don’t even let them in if they are dragging along a big suitcase. Sonja is smart, keeps a low profile. When all this is over, maybe I’ll invite her for a glass of Madeira.

  A man in white spats, a dark overcoat and light grey scarf hurries up to me. He has the same ridiculous moustache as Senior Constable Hessler. The snowflakes are hitting his black top hat, where they dissolve into velvety, gleaming patches. He takes a big stride onto the pavement and tugs at the door handle of the pawnbroker, then sighs and stamps at the ground. The brim of his hat is worn. There’s a red-brown stain on his scarf.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he says. He speaks in some southern accent. I blow a plume of smoke into the night. The man shakes his head with a doleful look. ‘What bloody rotten luck.’

  ‘That’s often how it goes.’

  ‘You see, my wallet got stolen. Just as the hotel bill was going to be paid.’

  ‘Get lost.’

  ‘But look here, my wedding ring, it’s worth at least five hundred, you can keep it as surety.’

  ‘Get lost.’

  Oldest trick in the book. The man paces about for a while, before he crosses the street and stands in a door on the other side. He glares at me. I pick up my newspaper and leaf through it.

  I’ve smoked about half of my cigar and I’m standing there stamping some life into my frozen-stiff feet when I see a little bloke in a sports cap come jogging along. Apart from the trickster opposite, the street is deserted. I peer up at St Clara’s new copper roof. It’s five to. It’s got to be Petersén. A lightweight. I can definitely save myself five kronor by going in hard. When it comes to unpaid debts there are advantages in holding back, but not with information. As long as you keep them conscious and alive, everything is allowed. I open my overcoat, my best suit underneath.